Post-structuralism

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Post-structuralism

• Literature in English ASL

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Structuralism VS Post-structuralism

• Post-structuralism is a response to structuralism
• Structuralism was an intellectual movement in
  France in the 1950s and 1960s that studied the
  underlying structures in cultural products (such
  as texts) and used analytical concepts from
  linguistics, psychology, anthropology, and other
  fields to interpret those structures. It
  emphasized the logical and scientific nature of
  its results.

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• Post-structuralism offers a way of studying how
  knowledge is produced and critiques structuralist
  premises. It argues that because history and
  culture condition the study of underlying
  structures, both are subject to biases and
  misinterpretations. A post-structuralist approach
  argues that to understand an object (e.g., a
  text), it is necessary to study both the object
  itself and the systems of knowledge that produced
  the object.

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Introduction

• A major theme of poststructuralism is instability
  in the human sciences, due to the complexity of
  humans themselves and the impossibility of fully
  escaping structures in order to study them
• A broad historical description of intellectual
  developments in continental philosophy and
  critical theory
• An outcome of Twentieth-century French philosophy
  
• The prefix "post critical of structuralism
• Structuralism culturally independent meaning
• Post-structuralists culture as integral to
  meaning

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Introduction

• A rebellion against structuralism
• A critical and comprehensive response to the
  basic assumptions of structuralism
• Studies the underlying structures inherent in
  cultural products (such as texts)
• Utilizes analytical concepts from linguistics,
  psychology, anthropology and other fields

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• The author's intended meaning is secondary to the
  meaning that the reader perceives. Also the
  author's identity as a stable "self" with a
  single, discernible "intent" is a fictional
  construct. Post-structuralism rejects the idea of
  a literary text having a single purpose, a single
  meaning, or one singular existence.

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• Instead, every individual reader creates a new
  and individual purpose, meaning, and existence
  for a given text. To step outside of literary
  theory, this position is generalizable to any
  situation where a subject perceives a sign.
  Meaning (or the signified, in Saussure's scheme,
  which is as heavily presumed upon in
  post-structuralism as in structuralism) is
  constructed by an individual from a signifier

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• . This is why the signified is said to 'slide'
  under the signifier, and explains the talk about
  the "primacy of the signifier."
• A post-structuralist critic must be able to use a
  variety of perspectives to create a multifaceted
  interpretation of a text, even if these
  interpretations conflict with one another. It is
  particularly important to analyze how the
  meanings of a text shift in relation to certain
  variables, usually involving the identity of the
  reader (for example class, racial, or sexual
  identity)

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Introduction

• To understand an object (e.g. one of the many
  meanings of a text), we need to study
• the object itself
• the systems of knowledge which were coordinated
  to produce the object

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Introduction

• Post-structuralism a study of how knowledge is
  produced
• Reader's culture readers society (in the
  interpretation of a piece)

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Basic Assumptions

• Concept of "self" as a singular and coherent
  entity a fictional construct
• An individual Conflicting tensions Knowledge
  claims (e.g. gender, class, profession, etc.)
• To properly study a text, the reader must
  understand how the work is related to his own
  personal concept of self
• Self-perceptioncritical in one's interpretation
  of meaning

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Basic Assumptions

• The meaning the author intended secondary to
  the meaning that the reader perceives
• Rejects the idea of a literary text having one
  purpose, one meaning or one singular existence
• To utilize a variety of perspectives to create a
  multifaceted (or conflicting) interpretation of a
  text
• To analyze how the meanings of a text shift in
  relation to certain variables (usually the
  identity of the reader)

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Concepts (1) Destabilized Meaning

• Reader as the primary subject of inquiry (instead
  of author / writer)
• Such displacement the "destabilizing" or
  "decentering" of the author
• Disregarding an essentialist reading of the
  content
• Other sources are examined for meaning (e.g.
  readers, cultural norms, other literature, etc.)
• Such alternative sources promise no consistency

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Concepts (1) Destabilized Meaning

• ...language refers to the position of the
  listener and the speaker, that is, to the
  contingency of their story. To seize by inventory
  all the contexts of language and all possible
  positions of interlocutors is a senseless task.
  Every verbal signification lies at the confluence
  of countless semantic rivers. Experience, like
  language, no longer seems to be made of isolated
  elements lodged somehow in a Euclidean space...
  Words signify from the "world" and from the
  position of one who is looking.
• Lévinas, Signification and Sense, Humanism
  of the Other, tr. Nidra Poller

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Concepts (2) Deconstruction

• Rejects that there is a consistent structure to
  texts, specifically the theory of binary
  opposition
• Post-structuralists advocate deconstruction
• Meanings of texts and concepts constantly shift
  in relation to myriad variables
• The only way to properly understand these
  meanings deconstruct the assumptions and
  knowledge systems which produce the illusion of
  singular meaning

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Post-structuralist Writers

• Jean Baudrillard
• Judith Butler
• Félix Guattari
• Fredric Jameson
• Sarah Kofman
• Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
• Jean-François Lyotard
• Jean-Luc Nancy
• Bernard Stiegler

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